Ruin's Wake

by Patrick Edwards

  ‘Let’s continue, shall we?’ He touched a control on the side of the chair and motors whirred. The brown leather reclined until she was lying flat on her back. ‘Lift up your shirt,’ he said.

  Kelbee did as he asked, pulling her blouse out from the waistband of her long skirt and gathering it up under her breasts, leaving her belly exposed. The medico produced a jar and applied some clear gel to her abdomen; the substance was cold as he spread it with his gloved, efficient hands. From this angle, Kelbee could see how much her belly had swollen into a glistening little hill of taut skin, though the rest of her body had barely changed. It looked almost like the medico’s head.

  He reached behind the chair and pulled round a metal trolley, each shelf lined with blue towels. From the top shelf he took a plastic box as long as his hand and held it lengthways. The leading edge ended in an opaque bubble which he began to pass over her bump, pressing down gently. Small yellow and green lights on the device winked as he worked. Occasionally, he checked a screen set into the box’s side, continuing the slow, methodical pressing. The face behind the gold-rimmed glasses stayed neutral, almost disinterested.

  There was a click and a bleep from the device and he withdrew it, leaving a finger on the spot where the machine had made the sound.

  He took a square piece of cloth from a shallow bowl of red liquid and wiped around and under his finger – it made her skin tingle and left a stain like a birthmark. Then he was holding a thin syringe with a long needle. The sight made her go rigid.

  Irritation flashed over the medico’s face. ‘Nothing to worry about. Stay still.’ He lowered the needle towards the red stain. Her hand moved to cover her belly. He frowned, then slapped it away. His eyes moved over to the arm restraints, lingered, then returned to her face. One eyebrow rose just a fraction.

  She rested her stinging hand out of the way and allowed him to continue.

  The needle touched her skin and she clenched her teeth. She felt it go in but there was no pain, just the feeling of something alien entering her flesh. It was like waking up with a numb arm, when the skin felt like hers and yet not, distant like an echo of sensation. As quickly as it had gone in the needle was withdrawn and she dared to open her eyes. A red pearl of blood sprang up, but the medico’s swift hand wiped it away and applied a small adhesive bandage. He touched the chair’s controls and brought her back to a sitting position, handing her a clean paper towel. ‘That’s it. Tidy yourself and get dressed,’ he said.

  Kelbee wiped the gummy remains of the gel away and tucked in her blouse. She heard the curtain rasp back.

  The medico took a seat behind his desk and opened a file. He made a brief note on the cover sheet, then looked up and spoke directly to the Lance Colonel. ‘One to two weeks for the gene test, another for authentication. Any abnormalities and you’ll be contacted by Termination Services. Any paternity irregularities…’ Kelbee saw the Lance Colonel stiffen and she fought to keep her own expression neutral, ‘…will be notified at the same time. If you hear nothing a month from now, assume everything is nominal. Good day.’ With that, he opened a drawer and dropped the file in, drawing out another. He began to read.

  The Lance Colonel cleared his throat, but the medico acted as if they’d simply vanished, so he grabbed her elbow and led her out of the room. Outside, another nurse was waiting and led them to the exit at the rear of the building where she said goodbye. There was a vein standing out in his temple, but he fumed in silence.

  Outside, the heat of the day hit Kelbee like a slap. The car was waiting, and they climbed in to escape Ras’s glare. As they pulled away, she gazed out of the window, keeping well away from the Lance Colonel, not wanting to set him off. There was a cold lump over her heart, a clawing thing that felt like it might burst black panic inside her. The paternity test. He would know. Even before the child grew and looked nothing like him, the Lance Colonel would know. Looking at him now, distant eyes narrowed and his mouth firm, she knew he would kill her before bearing the disgrace.

  What if it’s not Nebn’s child after all? said a small, panicked corner of her mind. Maybe nothing has to change.

  Fantasy, and she knew it.

  Six years of sharing the same bed and nothing had quickened, no matter how many times he’d taken her. It was what had turned an already sullen man even more so, and now suddenly made him something approaching happy.

  This is real. I have to deal with it. She pressed a hand to her belly. For both our sakes.

  Clean streets gave way to concrete and high-rises. After several minutes of silence, she heard him turn towards her. His face had regained its composure.

  ‘We are visiting a colleague of mine this evening,’ he said. ‘Wear something nice.’ Then, most unexpected of all, he smiled. It made him look younger.

  Kelbee nodded, forcing a smile back.

  * * *

  Their hosts were the officer from the execution and his bland wife. Their apartment was only a few streets away in a tower block so similar Kelbee felt she could have walked around a corner and found her own home.

  The wife was older than her, hair and clothes traditional – she could have been taken straight from an education pamphlet on home values. Her face never wavered from its blank half-smile as she took their coats and directed the Lance Colonel through to the living area where he was greeted loudly by three officers in mid-conversation. Their collars were undone and their manner casual as they welcomed him in, telling him to put his hat down, have a drink, relax. Behind them, a screen flickered with static.

  The apartment was very much like hers, only bigger. The place smelled different, perfumed with sandalwood and jasmine. Though the kitchen and lounge were open to each other, like hers, the cabinets were new and the smell of barely disguised rot from the refuse was absent. The taps gleamed under the sole window that looked out towards Karume’s rim and the factories that skirted it. Ras had just dipped under the horizon and the dying rays outlined distant chimneys, red lights blinking on and off, smoke stacks trailing in the wind.

  The view, at least, is worse, she thought.

  The furniture was plush, gleaming leather pin-back chairs and dark wood side-tables. The wall-hangings were elaborate, colourful scenes of the Seeker’s life, where hers were frayed at the edges. The Seeker’s portrait was gilded where hers was a plain wood frame. She wondered if there were more bedrooms here – space enough for a family, perhaps?

  Imagine this as yours, said the little voice in her that had spoken earlier, if he takes it to be his flesh and blood. A lance colonel and his family in a big, comfortable home with a steamer that doesn’t leak and wood floors instead of cold plastic. And one day, perhaps, he’ll be a brigadier or even a general in a tall house in the Galamb; there’ll be nothing to do but gossip with the other wives of your station and meddle in the lives of your children

  Children? answered the harsher, grounded part of her. Will you find another man to take his place in your bed every few years? Or will Nebn have to see several of his blood grow up in another man’s nest?

  The crowning glory of the apartment, all chairs pointed at it like an altar, was the personal vid screen that flickered on the lounge wall. As much as her common sense told her to remain clear-headed, the appeal of an easy life was like the pull of the ocean. All it would take was more lies.

  Her hostess was at her elbow, guiding her towards the kitchen where two other women stood at the central island, rigid like soldiers on parade. They looked on-edge, alert for any sign of summons: dutiful wives, poised and ready. Neither woman acknowledged her. Her hostess led her to her place, clearly expecting her to adopt a similar pose.

  No-Face, I’ll call you. It’s more like a mask anyway. The thought steadied her. She watched the Lance Colonel unbutton his tunic and take a seat. Responding to some unseen signal, No-Face took over a tray of cold drinks; the men helped themselves without acknowledgement.

  It was close and hot in the apartment, though no one else seemed to mind. Kelbee
wondered if they would open a window. The nape of her neck felt damp; she saw the woman next to her was flushed, with just the hint of a sheen on her forehead.

  ‘It’s hot, isn’t it?’ she murmured, chancing a smile. The woman shot her a glance but remained mute.

  There it is, Kelbee thought. That look of fear. How well I know it.

  ‘I’m a little warm,’ she persisted. ‘Perhaps it’s my condition.’ Mentioning the pregnancy might break the ice. There was no reaction, the other women as still as rocks. She forced a smile. ‘Not to worry, I know my way around.’ She turned to go to the window over the sink. She would crack it open, just a little, let some air in. They would all benefit from it, it was so hot.

  As she turned her elbow was gripped, and she was yanked backwards. Her hand was pinned to the counter; No-Face’s head hadn’t moved, the half-smile in place, but her grip was like stone. Her nails dug into the top of Kelbee’s hand.

  ‘My husband hates the cold.’ The tone was as flat and dead as her eyes, as if different minds were operating head and hand.

  Shocked by the sudden violence, Kelbee felt her heart hammering in her chest. The black eyes held her. Something inside screamed to slap that expressionless face, to keep hitting and hitting until it showed some semblance of life even in pain. Instead, she nodded and stayed where she was. The grip released. Neither of the two other women had moved.

  There was a crackle and the screen began to flicker. The low hum dissolved into broken sound, speech over music. ‘Turn it up,’ called one of the men and the host played with a control box by his side. The words became sharper and the picture snapped into focus. The familiar words of the Seeker boomed out loud. A man appeared, looking up at the sky with pride on his face. The music swelled, trumpeting and triumphant.

  The man on the screen looked like he had tears in his eyes as he began to speak.

  ‘Today our beneficent Venerable Guide was visiting a reeducation park. Even malcontents and troublemakers are not spared mercy!’

  Onscreen, the straight-backed figure of Fulvia arc Borunmer gazed out over an ordered grid of buildings. The sun was shining and the pathways looked neat. There were high fences there, though, Kelbee noted, if you looked close enough. Then the Guide was passing in front of a line of men and women in simple but clean clothes, all of them bowed low.

  ‘Damn traitors!’ barked one of the officers.

  ‘Look at the mercy she shows these scum,’ said another. ‘I’d have them thrown off a rock.’ Then, after a pause, he hurried, ‘Of course, the Guide knows best!’

  ‘The guests all showed their eternal gratitude for the leniency of the Hegemony and its blessed leader. Even outcasts are not forgotten under the Seeker’s eternal gaze!’

  Fulvia’s smile was thin and fixed but her eyes looked deadly, as if at any moment she would smite one of the bowing figures into ruin. One of the ‘guests’ was beaming, gap-toothed, laughing. Kelbee remembered the cold way the bald woman had drawn the pistol and executed the old man; she remembered the blood on yellow blossoms and tasted copper in her mouth.

  A flash of something behind the line of people. A small face at a window. It had gone unnoticed by the filmmakers, she was sure of it, and none of the people in the room made any comment, but she’d seen it. A child, sunken eyes in a dirty, drawn face, peering out; there was pain there that had no right to be on the face of someone so young. It was gone so fast she wondered if it had been there at all but the weight in her chest remained.

  Is this the world you want for the life you’re carrying, where other children can have looks on their faces like that? She imagined it, her child, still faceless in her mind but so very intimately hers. Would it have her deep black hair? Would it be tall like Nebn? Would she know what to do when it felt sad, or angry, or afraid? She imagined it with tears running down dirty cheeks and her jaw tightened.

  The picture dissolved to black.

  ‘Witness the glory of the Seeker’s victory over the rank squalor and decadence of the old world. Watch him sunder the Lattice, scour the seas clean. See him carve out the new world, the glorious world of today! Unity through Might!’

  The picture dissolved into a dramatic sweeping landscape, a windswept battlefield. On top of a mountain, Ras setting behind him, a rider sat atop a rearing horse, frozen in motion, a great red flag streaming from his raised hand. Above, lights burst in bright flashes of yellow and blue and the music swelled to a crescendo. The men whooped and clinked their glasses together.

  It was the story of how the Seeker saved the world from the Ruin. How the corrupted, arrogant world that had gone before had been destroyed by fire and by water. In the film it was the Seeker that swept the world clean for the chosen ones, though the Tellers always spoke of him saving them from the Ruin as if it was an outside force. Which was the truth, she wondered. After all that had happened to her recently, she wondered if anything in her head was right any more.

  The film was two hours long. She’d seen it many times before – everyone had, surely? – but she’d never had to stand throughout. She thought about asking for a chair but the memory of those nails digging into her skin and the unmoving women by her side kept her from it. She might be doing her duty as a wife, bearing a child, but always Fortitude, always Restraint, that was the message from her silent, blank-faced hostess.

  She watched as a bead of condensation formed at the lip of the Lance Colonel’s glass, tracing a slow path down to the top of his hand just as the sweat from her neck meandered down her spine. Laughing, oblivious, her husband swapped his glass to the other hand and licked the droplet away.

  * * *

  Later that night she helped the Lance Colonel through the door of their apartment. He was drunk and affable, an unfamiliar mix. In the bedroom, after she’d pulled his boots off, he touched the side of her face.

  ‘Hope you enjoyed tonight.’ He took her hand and laid a sloppy kiss on the inside of her wrist, then placed his palm on her bump. He murmured something under his breath. She smiled, wishing he’d take his hot hands off her skin. He let himself fall back onto the pillows and soon his breathing became deep and regular.

  With a quiet sigh, she peeled off her many layers and slipped into a night shift. Leaving him, she went into the bathroom and soaked the corner of a towel under the tap, sponging under her arms and at her forehead, letting the cool water drip. The heat was harder to deal with since the pregnancy had begun, and the weather seemed to conspire to keep her on the edge of exhaustion all the time. The sickness in the mornings had passed but she felt bloated after every meal. At least she had more free time – more than she’d ever had before. It made seeing Nebn easier.

  As she squeezed some water onto her neck, she watched her reflection in the little mirror. Were those new lines at the corners of her eyes? She’d never taken much time to look at herself in the past. Her hair was longer than usual, dipping beneath her shoulders. She gathered it up in a fist behind her head, observing the effect.

  She’d never liked her neck: too long, stalk-like. As a girl she’d been teased by the village boys for it. They’d called her ‘Lyca-girl’, like the long-necked, ungainly sea birds that waddled so gracelessly over the beach, searching for shellfish. They’d made up a song about it, but she couldn’t remember how it went. It had been years since she’d even thought of it. Where would those boys would be now – farmers, butchers, soldiers, fathers? Had they made good lives for themselves?

  Have you? asked her image. Have you made a good life?

  She let the hair fall back over her shoulders and caught her own gaze. Her reflection stared back, then dipped its head.

  Do it. Now’s the time.

  She left the tap to trickle – to cover the sounds – then padded into the lounge, listening for the regular, wheezing breath from the bedroom. Her footsteps were silent, though it only made her more aware of every other sound, from the drip of the tap to the gentle moan of the wind outside. She calmed herself. Years of creeping about try
ing not to disturb him had prepared her for this.

  As she passed the Seeker’s portrait something made her pause. The picture stared out at her, His face beaming, always watching, always mindful. Ever since she’d learned to talk she’d greeted this portrait every morning. The Architect of Unity.

  Brennev’s deep voice jumped into her head, his words as sharp now as they had been before, as was the shock that nothing had happened when he’d said those terrible, unspeakable things. The world had not ended. No soldiers had kicked down the door.

  She looked closely at the portrait, all full cheeks and shining eyes. Is it possible, she thought, that He is only a man? A dead man?

  Before she knew what she was doing, her hand stretched out and flicked the glass of the picture, her fingernail pinging off the Seeker’s forehead. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Why had she done that?

  Just to see if anything would happen.

  Nothing did, bar a tiny stinging feeling under her nail. The Seeker beamed back at her, untroubled. Just a fat man with a big smile. Kelbee rubbed her hand on her leg, then remembered what she had to do.

  It was dark, only a sliver of faint light coming through the kitchen window. The Lance Colonel’s bag was by his favourite chair, a square briefcase held shut by two polished clasps. Kelbee picked it up and placed it on the low table. One of the clasps had four rotating cylinders embedded in it, numbers engraved on the face. Each cylinder could be rotated to display a combination of four digits. Kelbee examined the lock for a moment, made a mental note of their positions, then turned the dials to show the number of the Lance Colonel’s regimental unit and pressed the metal stud. The lock stayed shut. She flicked the numbers to show the day and month of the Lance Colonel’s birth. Again, the stud refused to move.

  What numbers would he find significant? Now, more than ever, her lack of knowledge about anything in his life before she’d entered it stared her in the face. A birthday, perhaps? She tried the day and month of his, but the lock stayed firm.